World's War Events $v Volume 3: Beginning with the departure of the first American destroyers for service abroad in April, 1917, and closing with the treaties of peace in 1919.
History
World's War Events $v Volume 3: Beginning with the departure of the first American destroyers for service abroad in April, 1917, and closing with the treaties of peace in 1919.
World War, 1914-1918
All day I worked without food, and after 7.30 got supper for myself and
three companions. We hoped for a night's rest, but the Germans began
bombing us at dusk, and kept it up till daylight. They were after
hospitals, as we knew by the fact that the dropping bombs were at a
distance from us and the regular line. All night the machine-gun battle
went on--our own guns at E----, warring with the sweeping planes
overhead. We got so tired of going to shelter, and so accustomed to the
firing, that we finally stayed in our rooms and even opened our shutters
to peer out into the calm summer sky. Shells were bursting and ground
signals of colored lights were streaming skyward. It was too exciting to
sleep until we gave out from sheer exhaustion. I managed to get an
intermittent slumber from four until seven.
[Sidenote: The town is full of refugees.]
As there was no breakfast at our mess, I went to the canteen for a cup
of coffee, and found the place crowded. The French Commander said that
our town was due to be shelled before long as we were getting in range
of the German guns. We decided not to go until we had to, but to cease
keeping the canteen open at night; to sell only hot coffee, chocolate,
bread, cheese, eggs and apples by day--thus omitting our hot meal--and
to divide our forces, one part to run the canteen, another to organize a
temporary canteen on the grounds of the evacuation hospital, and still
another to maintain the rolling canteen at the railway station. The
streets were almost blocked with refugees. I saw one unconscious woman
in a wheelbarrow being trundled by a boy. Regiments went through, going
up to the front, the men's faces stern and set. The sound of the battle
grew louder and louder.
[Sidenote: An airplane sweeps the street with a machine gun.]
That night we bundled our bedding into the Ford camion, and slept in one
of the deep champagne caves. I had volunteered to go on duty at the
canteen at six the next morning, and arriving there on time, found two
or three hundred tired and hungry men waiting for the doors to open.
The night before a great thermos marmite had been filled with boiling
coffee, and we were able to begin feeding the men without delay. All day
we did a tremendous business. About half past nine a German plane came
over, tried to bomb us, and swept the street with a machine gun. We
continued serving and pouring out coffee. The aviator killed a woman and
child who were standing in a garden, and then one of our machine guns
got him. The plane, a three passenger one, came tumbling down into the
public square. The pilot was caught with both legs under the engine and
was badly hurt, but the observer and the gunner were uninjured. An
infuriated Frenchman, who had seen the killing of the woman and child,
rushed up and killed the gunner as they lifted him out. I got these
facts from an American staff car driver who assisted in extricating the
pilot. That morning, our guns got three German planes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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